1. FIELD OF THE INVENTION
This invention relates generally to the field of optics and in particular to optical polygons which are used to manipulate light beams for reading, writing, and inspecting various surfaces.
2. Prior Art--FIGS. 1 to 4
A wide variety of optical systems for scanning surfaces with light beams are known in the art. Some of these systems employ flat mirrors and others employ polygonal mirrors. Many of these systems are reading (or inspection) machines; such machines usually have a camera in a fixed position and the information (the image) is transferred to the camera from different locations by a scanning mirror. Others of these systems are writing (printing) machines; these have a similar design where a laser is mounted in a fixed position and a writing beam from the laser shines upon a scanning mirror which causes it to scan across a surface.